Comments on: How to Read Years in English

By: Hasan

Hasan — Sat, 29 May 2010 21:55:57 +0000

If it would make sense, I would offer Turkish reading of years to English. So simple, practicle and sound. For example: 1054: thousand fifty four; 2100: two tousand hundred 503: five hundred three; 1970: thousand nine hundred seven; 1358: thousand three hundred fifty eight.

By: bahar

bahar — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:03:58 +0000

thanks for posting these important informations. today when answering various questions we (me and one of my students) came across a question about the reading of dates. I was confused. so I researched from this site. thank you

By: Vince

Vince — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 02:38:38 +0000

Also,

@David: If you’re looking to be a BBC broadcaster, you can obsess over “correct” English, but an ESL student would probably want to focus on sounding like a native speaker.

By: Vince

Vince — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 02:36:34 +0000

As an American living in the Northeast and Midwest, I’ve never had anyone correct me on “four thirty two” or “ten sixty six”. There doesn’t seem to be one “correct” way other than what sounds “normal,” but I tend to lean towards descriptivism.

I find it interesting that references toward this past decade tend to follow this pattern:

“two thousand one”

While references to the next decade and beyond follow a different one:

“twenty twelve”

Any ideas why?

By: David

David — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:21:14 +0000

@Ravshan:

Twenty-one hundred and two thousand one hundred would both be correct.

By: thomas

thomas — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 08:49:51 +0000

@Ravshan: First thing that comes out of my mouth is “twenty one hundred”.

By: Ravshan

Ravshan — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 08:07:30 +0000

how to read year 2100?
-twenty one hundred? doesn’t seem right to me..:(
-21 oh oh? sounds bit funny :)
-two-thousand and hundred?

thanks

By: David

David — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 03:38:02 +0000

Don’t know if it has been mentioned, but it is incorrect to read 1492 as “Fourteen hundred and ninety two.” The “and” denotes numbers after a decimal.

Correct is “Fourteen hundred ninety-two.”

To read “14.92″ would be “Fourteen and ninety-two hundredths.”

Most of your examples are verbal short-cuts, and not correct English. “432″ is always correctly read “Four hundred thirty-two.” If you want to read it “Four thirty two,” fine, that’s your prerogative, but don’t expect there to be rules for special situations that have only been created by incorrect English uses.

By: JuanK

JuanK — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 02:54:27 +0000

Hey, I really liked this post. I tried to explain this to a friend and then I realized how hard it was. So I’m glad you recognize it.

I used to think there was no rules but those picked up by practice -I’m peruvian, by the way- but after reading this I ended up learning too ñ_ñ. Thanks a lot!

By: Nada H.T

Nada H.T — Tue, 19 May 2009 19:08:41 +0000

Wonderful !!

Thank you very much !

an M.A. linguistic student and hopefully

a teacher one day in sha Allah